Randy and I made the final changes to the 
bioinformatics lab today. I'm very happy with the exercise: it's a nice balance between something real and something simplified enough that students can engage with it. We ran through it with the TAs yesterday -- for many of them, it was very challenging. Most have little familiarity with genomics and bioinformatics and found the exercise challenging. Tomorrow we'll try it with students for the first time. I hope I've provided enough scaffolding for them to be able to complete the exercise, but that it will give them an opportunity to puzzle through what goes into building a gene and what kinds of data and possibilities exist with the new genomics technologies.
StevenBrewer